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> Not limited to OpenOffice.org only, but how useless is GNOME
> or any desktop for all that matters, without applications?
> Sure, DirectFB plus GNOME may be nice fast and cool (as well
> as unstable), but frankly, if it can't run applications
> available on X - it is useless.

You should read the Link and then the 2 Links inside it. I clearly stated that I don't want to take away functionality for X. GNOME needs and must continue running under X and it will do this. GTK+ 2.x offers GDK an graphical abstraction library which has many backends, one for X11, one for LinuxFB and in a couple of days it supports DirectFB as well. The majority of GNOME applications (and the ideal way) is told to use GDK calls in favor of X11 calls whenever possible. I only ask the people and developers to take care and use GDK calls whenever possible rather than X11 directcalls and that they should take care for the other backends because many GNOME apps include things this way

#include <gdk/gdkx.h>

Without checking the backend, which imo is an requirement. I needed to change a lot of stuff to

#include <gdk/gdkfb.h>

Now if the maintainer would take care of this and make proper use of GDK then we would both life in a good world. Less issues porting things and so on. I don't take your rights away from using X11, you should still do this and you don't even recognize any differences if you want, the same way as before. But I also think that supporting DirectFB as alternative (by paying attention to the GDK backends) make sense for embedded systems, or people that want to try something differently. I recommend you gonna go to

http://www.directfb.org/

and throw an eye on the stuff there and play with it on a different plattform it's really worth the education. The concerns for OpenOffice is not mine I personally don't see it as part of the GNOME Desktop (no matter if it's put in the hood of GNOME or mentioned on their Office page). Hell OpenOffice don't even use native widgesets, or native GNOME functions from the libraries offered. Maybe this will happen one day but as long this isn't the case it's still no excuse for other developers trying to find alternative ways. I rather prefer getting rid of my 150mb xfree installation (on MY system, where 59mb are just fonts) in favor to only 300kb directfb library. This is a total difference. You only boot the kernel and in not ime you are on your desktop. The console and the xserver disappear and merge into one viewing system as you may know from former Amiga times, there is no need to switch between console and x anymore because it's a different way of showing things. Not to mention the huge Memoryconsumption that you don't have anymore etc. DirectFB also offers AA font's through PANGO so you don't even see a difference. The only major difference you see is true shadow throwing, transparency, speed, less memory consumption.

Ok I now explained a bit more in detail on OSNews what I already wrote in the Links.